Letter to the Hebrews 12

¹ With so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us, we too, then, should throw off everything that hinders us, especially the sin that clings so easily, and keep running steadily in the race we have started.

² Let us not lose sight of Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection: for the sake of the joy which was still in the future, he endured the cross, disregarding the shamefulness of it, and from now on has taken his place at the right of God’s throne.

³ Think of the way he stood such opposition from sinners and then you will not give up for want of courage.

⁴ In the fight against sin, you have not yet had to keep fighting to the point of death.

⁵ Have you forgotten that encouraging text in which you are addressed as sons? My son, when the Lord corrects you, do not treat it lightly; but do not get discouraged when he reprimands you.

⁶ For the Lord trains the ones that he loves and he punishes all those that he acknowledges as his sons.[*a]

⁷ Suffering is part of your training; God is treating you as his sons. Has there ever been any son whose father did not train him?

⁸ If you were not getting this training, as all of you are, then you would not be sons but bastards.

⁹ Besides, we have all had our human fathers who punished us, and we respected them for it; we ought to be even more willing to submit ourselves to our spiritual Father, to be given life.

¹⁰ Our human fathers were thinking of this short life when they punished us, and could only do what they thought best; but he does it all for our own good, so that we may share his own holiness.

¹¹ Of course, any punishment is most painful at the time, and far from pleasant; but later, in those on whom it has been used, it bears fruit in peace and goodness.

¹² So hold up your limp arms and steady your trembling knees[*b]

¹³ and smooth out the path you tread;[*c] then the injured limb will not be wrenched, it will grow strong again.

¹⁴ Always be wanting peace[*d] with all people, and the holiness without which no one can ever see the Lord.

¹⁵ Be careful that no one is deprived of the grace of God and that no root of bitterness should begin to grow and make trouble;[*e] this can poison a whole community.

¹⁶ And be careful that there is no immorality, or that any of you does not degrade religion like Esau, who sold his birthright for one single meal.

¹⁷ As you know, when he wanted to obtain the blessing afterwards, he was rejected and, though he pleaded for it with tears, he was unable to elicit a change of heart.

¹⁸ What you have come to is nothing known to the senses: not a blazing fire,[*f] or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm;

¹⁹ or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them.

²⁰ They were appalled at the order that was given: If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.

²¹ The whole scene was so terrible that Moses said: I am afraid,[*g] and was trembling with fright.

²² But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival,

²³ with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with spirits of the saints who have been made perfect;

²⁴ and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant and a blood for purification which pleads more insistently than Abel’s.

²⁵ Make sure that you never refuse to listen when he speaks. The people who refused to listen to the warning from a voice on earth could not escape their punishment, and how shall we escape if we turn away from a voice that warns us from heaven?

²⁶ That time his voice made the earth shake, but now he has given us this promise: I shall make the earth shake once more and not only the earth but heaven as well.[*h]

²⁷ The words once more show that since the things being shaken are created things, they are going to be changed, so that the unshakeable things will be left.

²⁸ We have been given possession of an unshakeable kingdom. Let us therefore hold on to the grace that we have been given and use it to worship God in the way that he finds acceptable, in reverence and fear.

²⁹ For our God is a consuming fire.[*i]